Field
The present general concept relates to data transmission in communications systems and more particularly card application toolkit support for Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia systems.
Description of the Related Art
In known wireless telecommunications systems, transmission equipment in a base station or access device transmits signals throughout a geographical region known as a cell. As technology has evolved, more advanced equipment has been introduced that can provide services (including higher data rates and better managed quality of service) that were not possible previously. This advanced equipment might include, for example, an E-UTRAN (evolved universal terrestrial radio access network) node B (eNB), a base station or other systems and devices. Such advanced or next generation equipment is often referred to as long-term evolution (LTE) equipment, and a packet-based network that uses such equipment is often referred to as an evolved packet system (EPS). An access device is any component, such as a traditional base station or an LTE eNB (Evolved Node B), that can provide a user agent (UA), such as user equipment (UE) or mobile equipment (ME), with access to other components in a telecommunications system.
In mobile communication systems such as an E-UTRAN, the access device provides radio accesses to one or more UAs. The access device comprises resource scheduling functionality for allocating uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) data transmission resources among all the UAs communicating to the access device. The functions of the scheduler include, among others, dividing the available air interface capacity between the UAs, deciding the resources (e.g. sub-carrier frequencies and timing) to be used for each UA's packet data transmission, and monitoring packet allocation and system load.
An issue relating to mobile communications systems may be experienced when performing downloads (such as Internet downloads or file transfers) on a wireless and/or wired communication network. Often when performing such as downloads or file transfers, users can experience low data rates and relatively lengthy download times. Similar issues can be present with uploads. This issue can occur in spite of the use of high bandwidth technologies for access due to various reasons such as network congestion and limited network capacity. Even with technologies such as HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) or LTE (Long Term Evolution) that provide large data pipes during peak usage times, the pipe may be shared among large numbers of users which thus limits data throughput per user.
In many cases, users will typically be satisfied with their system performance if their download is completed by a certain time irrespective of when and how the download happens. For example, a user may wish to download music albums or movies online (either via a wired or wireless network). When the user initiates these downloads on the move or in the office they may not be interested in immediately listening/watching the media. This user would likely not mind if the download is complete by the time they arrive home or before the weekend. Even leisure users, in some cases, may not mind waiting for a day or two for a download to complete (as, for example, they can always watch/listen to the download they have initiated a day before). The same issue can also apply equally for data uploads. From the network's perspective when more and more users start accessing the network during peak-hours, the network load and congestion will increase. Delay insensitive data sessions can often choke the network pipe, thus affecting other users who may desire faster response times. To address this issue, users might be billed at a premium for the network usage during peak-hours or be penalized in other ways due to lengthier download times. At other times however, network capacity may be under-utilized during off-peak hours resulting in lost revenue and reduced average network efficiency for operators.
In certain known applications a user (or user client) can connect to the network at scheduled time and date to schedule a data transfer. However these applications do not consider whether the network conditions are optimal to access the service at that instant. Thus, additional session requests when received at an inappropriate time can actually increase the load on the network without any net improvement in the service. Likewise network scheduling strategies may be defined which try to optimize the wireless utilization based on various criteria. However these scheduling strategies help the users with their throughputs only if users make a data session request when the conditions are favorable.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a solution that links user requirements of data sessions to the network conditions and achieves mutually beneficial results for the user and for the network.